Well gang, change is afoot. In the past year since my son was born being a mother is just too much a part of my life not to also be a part of my blog.

So from here on out you can find writing related blogs at: www.jordanrosenfeld.wordpress.com
and my personal takes on life and motherhood at: www.musinmom.wordpress.com.

I thank you all for following along here for these wild years!

See you in other locations.

Jordan

Things Nobody Wants to Admit...

If I were to write a book about motherhood it would be titled: Things Nobody Wants to Admit About Being a Mother. Ever since making the unexpectedly hard transition from a "dyad" to a "triad" as my husband likes to say, I have kept little mental notes to myself about the things you just don't find in books, and none of your friends with kids really tell you ahead of time. These are the things you assume no other mother at the park is thinking or has ever felt, because strangers don't talk about these things. Only close friends will usually admit them to each other.

Lately, on the scale of minor evils, I've been finding myself desperate for the moment my son takes his nap or goes to bed, literally counting down minutes. And the irony is that he is more fun and wonderful than ever. It's not his behavior that's driving this in me. Being that he's nearly a year old (and oh my god how did that happen??) you'd think I'd have the hang of this whole motherhood thing. While aspects of it do come much easier and pretty much any stage past newborn is a walk in the park in comparison, after a year of spotty sleep and obligation and not being able to exercise, write, think or make love to your husband without either guilt or rush, you start to crave wider expanses of time. And I'll confess that my son goes to a babysitter 12 hours a week (in which I work, write, exercise, eat, call friends, read, etc) and I still feel this way. And my dear friends with multiple children will laugh when they read this and say, 'honey you 'aint seen nothin'...but these are MY confessions after all. Confessions of the unprepared mother of one child.

(And the really weird part is, even as I write this, my son is pulling tissues out of a box and making himself laugh and I just want to scoop him up and hold him for hours.)

Confessions

I did not get my brother or sister a birthday present. I have not yet made any plans for a mother day gift for my mother. I have stuck my kid in his roundabout walker so as not to have to try to entertain him more times than I can count these past couple months as we have grappled with the bizarre and frustrating process of trying to buy a home.

We walked away from one home, and I'm relieved and glad about it. The mojo was just bad. Bad no matter which angle you looked at it from. But we had to let go of our attachment first.

Now we've entered the new reality of home loans--one in which, thanks to all the scummy mortgage practices of the past few years--they're dotting more than their i's and crossing more than just their ts...we are literally at the last few feet of the race and suddenly some guy with a stop sign and a badge has sprinted out onto the track and he won't let us finish until he decides a certain thing.

I know I'm lucky to even be in this position. I don't want to become an entitled person. But I am so frustrated with the process.

JPR

Retreating into the Woods

I haven't posted in awhile. I have lots of things on my mind that seem as though they would make good blog posts--observations about human development, details of cupcake gorging, discussions on the nuances of trashy television shows--but by the end of the day the last thing I have energy for after mothering (and editing and writing wherever I can squeeze it in) and preparing for the biggest purchase of my life, as well as a move, is blogging.

So you'd think then that tweeting would be a happy alternative for a busy bee like me, and yet the idea of trying to condense my life down into tweetable lines is, in its own opposite way, equally mind numbing. I also can't keep up with all the tweets of people I allegedly follow. So I'm starting to feel, if not quite luddite, then just too damn tired or old to keep up. This feeling separates me from all the generations younger than me, and a good portion of my own Gen X. I admire those who can keep up, who can follow hundreds of streams of information and contribute their own and not GO INSANE in the meantime.

I'm suffering a backlash, I think, from all this easy instant access to information. I realize that just because one has access to information does not make the information valuable. I want to go sit by creeks and hang out in forests. I want to hide from the technology in the solitude of growing things, which do not have to be plugged in.

Heat Wave Nostalgia

Last year right after Mister B was born we had a horrible heat wave--about 105 or so for a week and then 100s off and on all summer. I was shell-shocked from, you know, becoming a new mother, stumbling up every couple hours, nodding off while nursing, with sweat running in just about every possible uncomfortable nook of my body, the poor kid stuck to me. Beside the couch where I nursed him was a little "sickbed" table with a tall glass of water, a glass of juice (both with straws in them so I could sip and nurse at the same time), and some sort of snack, like a banana or yogurt, because inevitably I was starving at some point in the middle of the night. Days were blurred as I tried to nap. Bedtime was often as early as 6:30 as I crumpled into a heap. It was awful, frankly. But awful in a kind of nostalgic way like young addicts remember the halcyon days of partying and awful hangovers. I wouldn't go back, but I sort of miss it.

This heat wave (only 90s, thankfully) is bringing it all back: the whirr of the portable air conditioner my husband bought that saved the day, the cloying feeling of our tiny place when all the curtains are drawn to keep the heat out, putting on boxers and a tank top to sleep in and stripping the flannel off the bed for cooler cotton. The difference is that I no longer feel like a zombie ate my brain or that my blood has been replaced with pure hormones. I'm still exhausted at the end of a day, still ready for that blissful moment of silence when the kid finally craps out, and it's still damn hot--but I can finally say that they were right all along (they being the chorus of other parents who urged me on): it does get easier. Different, yes, but easier. Better. More like a real person again, albeit one who goes to sleep and wakes up each day thinking of one 20 pound human being before anything else.

If You Love Something...Let it Escape From a Trap?

I keep this blog alive purposely for the excuse of venting. Most of the time I vent about stuff related to being a mother, which after 10 months, is still mostly an exercise in blind ignorance coupled with exhaustion. Today I'm just off. Things are going poorly and I am having difficulty staying positive and seeing the messages and determing what I'm supposed to learn.

Our favorite feral kitty, one of two born in our backyard just two weeks before my son last summer, whom I took to the spay clinic to be spayed at last this morning, escaped from her trap as the man was carrying her inside. Clearly the word "trap" is a misnomer. Tupperware would have been sturdier. She escaped outside into their little garden yard, so the only hope of catching her is that she might hang out long enough and get hungry enough to re-enter the death cage (as I'm sure she sees it) that we brought her in. And I'm pretty sure she's pregnant. So not only did we not get to keep our favorite kitty, I'm pretty sure I just fostered an infinite lineage of feral cats in the wilds of San Martin. And I liked her. She let us touch her and would come into our house for a few minutes at a time. Now she's gone, no longer has a steady food source and is knocked up to boot. And it's my fault. I'm just bummed and there's no way around it.

And then there is the big situation that remains unresolved all because of the fierce stubbornness of a woman who is going to lose her home anyway...which she could have done without dragging us and three very hardworking real estate agents into the mix. She didn't have to sign a contract agreeing to sell it to us. But she did. And yet...we wait in silence wondering what she's thinking since she won't call anyone back.

And please don't leave me a comment saying to keep looking. We are, of course, but I'm just sort of beyond frustration now--in a totally other place beyond patience that has no name.

I'm not saying all is bad...there is a lot of good. I spent a great morning in the park with my fellow mommies. My boy is a wonderful, funny light in my life, I have a fabulous marriage, my health, an income and so on...I am grateful.

But for a little while I just want to feel as disappointed as I am.

JPR

Patience in Laying Down Roots

My husband and I are trying to buy a home. Our first home. We know how lucky we are to be in this position given the state of the economy. But we've also worked really hard and saved a lot of money. We're doing this all on our own, without family help or other kinds of assistance. And in the middle of what was already an exercise in patience as we waited three months for our offer to be approved by the seller's bank (short sale anyone?), we've hit a very frustrating snag. A snag that makes us both want to stomp our feet in frustration like children because there's very little we can do to make things progress.

I don't want to go into detail about it, but here's an analogy: Imagine you interviewed for a job you really wanted, one that was perfect for you. They made you wait a very long time to finally say that you were hired--so long you'd almost stopped thinking you would get this job. You filled out your paperwork, bought some new outfits but before you could go in for training, they called to inform you that the person you were replacing refused to leave this job and until they could find a way to convince this person to leave, you couldn't start your job. And, in fact, if they couldn't get this person to leave that person would have to be forcibly removed, which would take many more months before a resolution. It's just like that.

But despite this level of frustration, I've been absorbed lately in getting to know my community better. Being a new mom has led to a whole bunch of new friends and opportunities for get togethers. Something about getting together over food and drooling babies at parks and each other's homes, coupled with the lovely almost-spring sunshine makes even this biggest frustration in my life feel not so bad. That, and the continually evolving antics of my ever-changing nine-month old boy make me really happy. There's so much to be happy about in my life. I have SO MUCH and I am lucky, and grateful for it. So even though the physical home is still a little slow in coming to us, I feel like the roots are already being laid, and I know the rest will follow.